Here goes:
I am somewhat annoyed by the car named the Kia Spectra. Since spectra is the plural of spectrum, it is annoying to hear it used in the singular.
There. That’s my controversial blog post of the week. I hope I have not hurt the feelings of any undeserving innocent bystanders.
Now I’ll end with a nostalgic and somewhat misleading picture*:
(….which goes with the nostalgic one above. Anyone remember what that is?)
-cvj
*Found here.
Wow. I had no idea they spelled it that way…!
-cvj
Back to the car misnomers; the Geo Prizm. It was about the same time gangsters began replacing “s” with “z” so I don’t know what GM was thinking. Wuz up guyz?
I definitely PEEKed and POKEd on the early 8086-type processors. And there was an interrupt call one could make from within DEBUG.COM which would turn on the mouse pointer at the DOS prompt, making everyone else at school go, “What the #&%$!?”
🙂 Heh, you kind of had to be there…..
-cvj
I knew the album cover, but you lost me at “peeking and poking”…
WOW!
Ok, I’ve been missing a trick here. I’m going to become part of Big Textbook so I can start building that house I’ll design that’ll be influences by… let’s say… greater than or equal to signs…
-cvj
are you familiar with james stewart, of calculus textbook fame? he built a ridiculously expensive house, supposedly influenced in its shape by integral signs…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB123869600484183257%26articleTabs%3Darticle
I met Syd Barrett in Cambridge, where his Mum was my wife’s landlady when she was a student – that probably says it all about age and background. Twenty years later, unwittingly or not, Imperial College Phys Soc adopted the prism logo for its teeshirt. A young fellow turned up in one at work, and was amazed by the response he got from the ‘old timers’ even then.
No, no … I only meant it statistically… so there are some very young people who get misty-eyed over it too… I’m sure you’re one of them!!!
-cvj
OK, are you calling me “of a certain age” ? Now *that* will make you loose your membership card instantly. 🙂
It’s cute the way all the oldtimers (ok, certain people above a certain age from a wide range of backgrounds) get misty-eyed over that album cover when it is brought up. And then there are people below a certain age who just see a picture of a prism refracting light.
-cvj
(To tell the truth…I appreciated them but was not a huge fan, although I did like their other famous album a lot… Never really super-loved this one… Er….do I lose my membership card now?)
I don’t know about Spectra, but that cover brings up many memories. Happy ones. 🙂 And yeah, we did not have computers where I grew up… just lots of pastures… And of course, my parents managed to get a crappy turntable. 🙂
The nostalgic picture is cool 🙂
That cover is unmistakable 😉
🙂
-cvj
That’s an interesting datum point.
robert: – Indeed. 🙂
Paul:- Yes, there are several other such examples…. somehow this Spectra one rubs me the wrong way more than usual. (Tristram… I’ll try.)
Ken:- I’ll look at that. Thanks!
-cvj
So what about the Mazda Millenia, then? Not only plural, but misspelled as well!
“And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes”?
A plural car names was a Car Talk Puzzler a while back (see 11-19 on http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/2007.html). The Kia Spectra was part of the answer.
Just look upon it as a mis-spelling of “Spectre”.
Yes, I fondly remember peeking and poking.
Yeah, Good Times…
-cvj
My first programable computer was a ZX81 with 2k memory and you had to load the programs from a cassette tape… The cool people knew how to poke and peek (I never bothered learning it that far).